Fraud Examiner Provides Insight into Life as a Small Business Owner

MEMBER PROFILE

Timothy Hediger, CFE, CIA, CCSA, Owner and CEO
Polaris Risk Services, LLC
Apex, N.C., USA

For Timothy Hediger, CFE, CIA, CCSA, Owner and CEO of Polaris Risk Services, LLC, the lack of timesheets, managers and 9-5 schedules are all dimmed by the No. 1 benefit of owning his own business: a liberal dress code. His usual attire consists of a Tommy Bahama t-shirt, shorts and flip flops, an outfit many corporate employees only dream of. But for Hediger, there is no office to leave or time card to punch. “It is a struggle because, as an independent professional, you must be available for your clients,” Hediger said. “But with that comes great flexibility in my schedule for my family.”

How did you know that making the move to self-employment was the right one?
When I got my first major client! As other independent professionals, professional service owners and partners at CPA firms can attest — your hopes, dreams and hard work are realized when you negotiate an effective contract with a customer.  

What is the most important thing you learned about owning your own business within the first year of striking out on your own?
Patience is the most important trait I needed while marketing and maintaining my client base. I cannot emphasize this enough to readers because professional services are inherently a trust business — even more so with fraud, forensics, internal controls and continuous monitoring. Think about it for a moment; you are working with a client that is under great distress and turns to you to solve it. Remembering patience when you gain and maintain a customer is vital. 

How did you build up your client base?
My major client took many years of networking before I got the opportunity. I feel that being friendly and helpful earns business. 

Read the full member profile here.

Fraud Examiners Not Immune from Ethical Dilemmas

GUEST BLOGGER

Dawn Taylor, CFE
ACFE Research Specialist

One of the toughest decisions I've ever faced was whether I should disclose to a children's welfare organization certain morally questionable activities in a friend's household or feign ignorance. Telling all that I knew came with the possibility of my friend’s children being taken from her — perhaps permanently. Yet, holding back information meant that the children might be put in harm’s way.    

Would it be ethical for me to withhold information from the investigator? Did the situation justify the mother’s children being taken from her? Were the children actually in harm’s way, and would lying keep them there? How might the children suffer if they were taken from their mother? How might the mother suffer as a result of having her children taken from her custody?

As you can see, I had a lot to think about.

We all face ethical dilemmas at some point or another, including in our professional lives. As CFEs, we owe it to ourselves, the profession and society to do the right thing. But when ethical values collide, the right course of action isn’t always clear. Where can we turn for guidance?

One valuable resource is the ACFE's new online self-study, Ethical Issues for Fraud Examiners. The course helps us to understand what constitutes an ethical dilemma and assists us in developing a greater awareness of ethical issues faced by fraud examiners. Included in the course are several interesting and thought-provoking fictional scenarios involving potential ethical dilemmas that pertain to fraud examinations.

Although there is no approach that will provide us with an automatic solution to our ethical dilemmas, Ethical Issues for Fraud Examiners can guide us as we deliberate on the issues for ourselves, explore important considerations and finally come to our own resolutions.

And, as an added bonus, the two CPE available allow CFEs to meet the new 2011 ethics-related CPE requirement.

Have you ever faced an ethical dilemma as a fraud examiner? How did you resolve it?